Last installment in series "Allegiant" worth a read

Nov. 6, 2013

Written by

Taylor Davis

Staff Writer

“Allegiant,” the final installment in Veronica Roth’s best-selling trilogy barely reached stores Oct. 22 before it was sold-out.

Bringing the thrilling trilogy to a close, “Allegiant” is told from a dual-perspective. Not only do we get to see inside two heads, but we also get to glimpse inside a futuristic society where nothing in the world is as it seems.

Roth began this amazing series with “Divergent,” which was released in 2011, and was followed by “Insurgent” (2012) and finally “Allegiant.”

When the reader first enters the magical world of “Divergent,” they are thrust into a world called "factions" designed to separate society into five ways of life based on five human strengths: Candor (Honest), Erudite (Intelligence), Abnegation (Selflessness), Amity (Peaceful) and Dauntless (Bravery).

In this dystopian future, the characters are born into a specific faction. Once they turn 16, they take an aptitude test to tell them which factions they will fit into best for the rest of their lives. During the Choosing Ceremony the following day, they decide which faction they will commit to. Once the person chooses, there is no going back. It's faction before blood, and faction for life.

The story focuses on a young woman, Tris Prior, who chose to leave her family's faction, Abnegation, for Dauntless. Throughout the book, Prior finds out that she differs from others in how she looks at life, and what she is willing to do to define herself as "Divergent," instead of one of the five factions.

Readers follow Prior through a rite of passage from the safety of her home, into a cruel world where the choices she makes are the difference between death and survive.

In Roth’s second installment, the inevitable ending of her normal way of life shatters Prior's entire world, as one of the factions is lost to violence. By the end of the book, an uprising has ripped all the factions apart and a hidden message from years past spreads a revelation among the population.

“Allegiant” is the conclusion to the gripping trilogy, where everything our protagonist once knew was destroyed by greed, power and loss. As Prior and the remaining characters face the fallout of the destruction in their lives, they also set out in search of a new future, revealed at the end of the second book. They find out that they are not alone, and that the edge of the world lies far beyond the fenced in city walls.

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In this series you will follow these characters through acts of bravery, romance, friendship, heroism, loss and best of all, rebellion.

These books put real life decisions inside a world where every decision is life or death. It brings you to a place where you think you’ve found yourself, and then everything you thought you knew was a lie.

The final piece to this trilogy left me with mixed feelings. The first two books seemed to build up to something amazing, yet in the third book, I felt like there could have been so much more. Yes, the plot of the story is what I expected, but these books could've gone on a lot longer, since there is a great deal more to explore.

It is hard to describe my feelings toward this book. On one hand, the ending is pleasantly unexpected. It's not your average fairy tale story ending. On the other hand, sometimes met-expectations are a good thing. Roth had a refreshing idea when she decided to write these books.

In the end, was the book everything I hoped it would be? No. But did I hate it? No. I can't decide for you, but either way the books are worth a read, especially since they are being made into a major motion picture serious, coming out March 2014.